BBC NEWS | Scotland | Crews face bonfire night attacks:
Firefighters and police faced a series of attacks from gangs as they attended bonfire night call-outs in the Strathclyde area.
When I read this, I’m glad I left the Land of Ned.
Blog
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no, I don’t get this, either
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aargh, why’d ya do it
Because the Mini-ITX box was sitting doing nothing all these months while there was much bickering amongst the driver developers. At least this will work, for smallish values of ‘work’. -
What’s with the Council of Canadians, eh?
Every couple of months, the Council of Canadians sends me a large and visually unappealing (1986 called; they want their typewriter font back) mailing, ranting about how those pesky Americans keep stealing our water.
Close reading of the mailing (which is hard, given the woeful typography) shows that the initiatives being railed at are either:
- run by Canadian companies, or
- are part of legislation voted for by Canadians.
Like most environmental things, Canada has an appalling record of looking after its abundant water. I think we think that the rest of the world thinks better of us than they do, or maybe even frankly cares about Canada.
I’m a bit worried by the CoC’s use of the n-word — nationalist — since it has unpleasant connotations, like the BNP and SNLA. Also, at least half of the mailing could be summed up as The Maude Barlow Fanzine, with only slightly lower production quality than the average zine.
And anyway, pesky Americans haven’t been stealing our water. Catherine hasn’t been sneaking any more out of the house than usual …
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iPod Shuffle: meh
There’ve been a couple of times that my 256MB USB key wasn’t quite big enough, so I was in the market for a 1GB unit. Since the iPod Shuffle was only slightly more expensive than a plain memory key, I thought it would be a good purchase.
Um, wrong. While it’s undoubtedly a decent (if slightly portly) USB key, it has huge deficiencies as a music player:
- you can’t skip to the next album in the play list.
- shuffle mode seems more like ‘play a few songs out of order from the same album until you manually skip to something different’.
- why is my music hidden away in weirdly-named files?
- iTunes doesn’t always sync all of the tunes in the playlist, leaving you with missing albums.
For me, I think the most the Shuffle will be is a way of listening to the couple of albums I’ve bought on the weekend. It is small, light, and sounds pretty reasonable, but it won’t replace my iRiver H120 for musical goodness.
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the Wawa Plume – it’s pollutionalicious!
The Wawa Plume (Google maps link) — a 24km trail of environmental destruction left by smelters — is clearly visible from space. You don’t need a weatherman to say that the wind blows from the southwest in Wawa.
Thanks to Evan o’ the Wildlands League for finding this.
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halloween fallout
One forgets how quickly — and how extravagantly — a carved pumpkin goes mouldy. It’s positively fluffy.
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something went wrong
The mapping application I use did a bad thing. This was supposed to a grid overlay on a map. -
queen west
Went to Canzine today after meeting. Can you belive it, an almost full house and it was a silent meeting?
Anyway, Canzine was full. Bought a couple of Spacing TTC buttons to show my commuter tribe affiliation (Kennedy — Union), and also a m@b book. Eveyone’s favourite Bramptonian Friendly Rich was there, being friendly and well-dressed. Jim Munroe looked in his element in his No Media Kings room.
After that, I walked down to the turbine. The warm weather had brought the ladybirds out. They were all over the deck.
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sparkly!
First frost of the autumn.
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IEEE Toronto Talk
Looks like I’m waving my hands in the air and talking to the IEEE Toronto Section on Thursday October 27, 2005, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. It’s in the Business Building, Room BUS 108 at Ryerson University.
They fed me an exceptionally keen meal on Saturday night in advance thanks, so it’d better be a good talk from me.
Update, October 27: the slides are here — scruss.com/talks/02005/ieee_toronto — still in a kind of draft state. I used Eric Meyer’s fabulous S5 again.
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wild east gone west?
My usual music store, Wild East Compact Sound on the Danforth, looked very closed today. I hope that John’s doing okay …
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best e-mail disclaimer ever
You’ve seen those page-long legal disclaimers that legal counsels require on outgoing e-mails? Well, I’ve been dealing with an Irish company that has the best one ever:
If this e-mail does not relate to Company‘s business then it is neither from nor authorised by Company
Short, to-the-point, and all you need.
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really winter
Further to winter, we’ve just had our first anemometer icing event in Alberta. Let it snow, etc.
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canwea over
Well, that’s CanWEA 2005 fully over. Yes, I’m still sifting through the contacts, brochures and swag I picked up, but it’s back to work for me.
I met a lot of people (including, quite unexpectedly, Stuart Hall of Natural Power in Scotland, whom I hadn’t seen in about 8 years), and the show seemed to be absolutely jumping. Could 2005/2006 be the year that Canada gets wind energy?
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review of CanWEA 2005 swag bag
So I’m at the 2005 CanWEA conference for the next few days. The swag bag is a standard nondescript nylon thing, thankfully big enough to take my iBook and a few other bits and pieces. The contents are a bit disappointing, though:
- a very plasticky flashlight that I may discard after harvesting its batteries.
- a small bag of jujubes.
- a copy of North American Windpower magazine (which in itself is quite a decent magazine, so is actually one of the highlights).
- a trade show guide, but no conference program (they were held up in customs; can’t we print ’em here?)
- various company brochures, zzzz.
You’ll note an absence of useful pens, pads, USB keys, model turbines, or other special swag. I was hoping for more …
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decemberists
The Decemberists were as great as ever last night. We snagged comfy sofas up on the balcony at The Phoenix, so it made up for the usually dire venue.
I’m definitely showing my age, though. When they played a demento-rock version of ELO’s Mr Blue Sky, I was about the only person who could sing along.
Hope that Derek got his laguiole back; it was confiscated at the door …
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Echidna Afraid of Spooning
— from the very wonderful Animals Have Problems Too.
(the above image is copyright 2005, Zach VandeZande, btw) -
the search for fair trade coffee @ SB’s
got a tall Estima (supposedly fair trade — they didn’t know) at the First Canadian Place branch at Adelaide & York, Toronto. It’s okay, but most fair trade coffees are too light for me.
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hitting the 400k-clicks
Paul’s Subaru hit 400,000km today. This, according to Nick — who is also a car mechanic — is quite something considering it’s on its original engine and transmission, and hasn’t had significant engine work done to it.
